THE SCOTCH COMMISSIONERS.
After the adoption of the international League and Covenant, Scotland sent five clerical and three lay commissioners who admirably represented their Church and country. They formed a group by themselves at the right hand of the Prolocutor. They were the only delegates who were elected by proper ecclesiastical authority, viz., the General Assembly of their Church (Aug. 19, 1643), at the express request of the English Parliament; they declined being considered members in the ordinary sense, but they were allowed by warrant of Parliament to be present and to debate, and practically they exerted an influence disproportionate to their number. They arrived in London in September, fresh from the battle 'with lordly bishops, popish ceremonies, and royal mandates,' and full of the 'perfervidum ingenium Scotorum.'
Alexander Henderson, Rector of the University of Edinburgh since 1640, sixty years of age, ranks next to John Knox and Andrew Melville in the history of Scotch Presbyterianism, and was the author of the 'Solemn League and Covenant,' which linked the Scottish and English nations in a civil and religious alliance for the Reformed religion and civil liberty. Being unmarried, he gave himself entirely to the Assembly from Aug., 1643, to Aug., 1646. He has heretofore been too much ignored. 'My researches,' says Masson, [1427] 'have more and more convinced me that he was, all in all, one of the ablest and best men of his age in Britain, and the greatest, the wisest, and most liberal of the Scottish Presbyterians. They all had to consult him; in every strait and conflict he had to be appealed to, and came in at the last as the man of supereminent composure, comprehensiveness, and breadth of brow. Although the Scottish Presbyterian rule was that no churchman should have authority in State affairs, it had to be practically waived in his case; he was a cabinet minister without office.'
Robert Baillie (b. 1599, d. 1662), Professor of Divinity and Principal of the University of Glasgow, did not speak much, but was a regular attendant for fully three years, a shrewd observer, and has been called the Boswell of the Assembly and 'the pleasantest of letter gossips.' His 'Letters and Journals' (not properly edited until 1842) are among the most graphic books of contemporary memoir to be found in any language. His faculty of narration in his pithy native Scotch is nothing short of genius. Whenever we have an account from Baillie of any thing he saw or was present at, it is worth all accounts put together for accuracy and vividness; so in his accounts of Strafford's trial, and so in his account of his first impressions of the Westminster Assembly' (Masson).
George Gillespie, minister of Edinburgh (d. 1648), Was only thirty-one years of age when he entered the Assembly, the youngest, and yet one of the brightest stars, 'the prince of disputants, who with the fire of youth had the wisdom of age.' He first attracted public attention in his twenty-fourth year by 'A Dispute against the English-Popish Ceremonies obtruded upon the Church of Scotland' (1637), which helped the revolt against Laud's innovations. He took a leading part in the debates of the Assembly against Erastianism and Independency. According to Scotch tradition he once made even Selden reel and say, 'That young man, by his single speech, has swept away the labors of ten years of my life.' This is probably a patriotic exaggeration. The excessive ardor and activity of his mind wore out his frame, and he returned from the Assembly to die in his native land.
Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661), Professor of Divinity and Principal of St. Mary's College in St. Andrews, was one of the most fervid and popular preachers in Scotland, and highly esteemed for his learning and piety. 'The characteristics of his mind were clearness of intellect, warmth and earnestness of affection, and loftiness and spirituality of devotional feeling.' His book, 'Lex Rex,' is considered one of the best expositions of the principles of civil and religious liberty; and his glowing letters of comfort from his prison in Aberdeen (which he called 'Christ's Palace') show him to be 'the true saint and martyr of the Covenant.'
Rev. Robert Douglas never sat. Among the lay commissioners, John Lord Maitland (afterwards Earl of Lauderdale) distinguished himself first by his zeal for the Scotch Covenanters, and afterwards by his apostasy and cruelty against them. Sir Archibald Johnstone, of Warristone, was from 1637 a leader among the Scotch Covenanters, a great lawyer, and a devout Christian, who, as Bishop Burnet, his nephew, narrates, often prayed in his family two hours at a time with unexhausted copiousness. The Marquis of Argyle also, who afterwards suffered death for his loyalty to the Scotch Kirk, sat for some time as an elder in the Assembly.